Monthly Archives: April 2018

Better in all those lonely years…

Posted on by
2

The is a short post – copied from something I wrote in the spur of the moment.

Life gets in the way of our final years.

I am not there yet, but as it gets closer, I understand it more….

I just watched a wonderful movie: “Our souls at night” … and at the end I became very upset, my wife hugged me as she didn’t really understand why… yeah, I am a bit of a sook watching movies but this was a bit next level (the movie wasn’t that good!).

The movie was good, and ended well, but I was upset

because I thought of all the lonely nights my Mum spent after my Dad died…  and all the lonely nights my Nana spent after Grandpa died.  For Mum it was 24 years, and for my Nana almost 45 years….

Some days, waking up alone, going about your day, and going to bed alone.  You have family, you have friends, the world goes on around you.  You have breakfast alone, your have dinner alone, and television is your companion all day, or a book of places you will never visit, people you will never meet, and at the end of the day you turn off the light alone.

How can we let this happen as people with family and friends and neighbours, that we don’t know wake, eat, sleep, alone, everyday.

Maybe because that is the way that it it, that is the way that it always has been and always will be….

It doesn’t make it any less sad… although those who experience it may feel that way at times… if not all the time…  and they don’t blame anybody.

Life is lived.  They have loved and been loved.  And I am sure, positive actually that I am going to be in a better place and all those people that I miss in those lonely nights who have gone already, I will see again.  I am sure they wait patiently for me, as I wait patiently for them, for now, I may be needed here, just one more time, a moment longer, to make sure everything is where it should be before I am gone.  Yes, I may be lonely, but I am not alone – everyone is alive and with me in my memories and expectations.

Plus the joy of seeing those that are still here, even if rarely, is worth it.

So, waking in the morning alone, eating alone, the TV, and switching off the light alone, is just the way I wait.

Makes me sad thinking about it now, and there is nothing I can do about it for Mum or Nana – and no doubt I will be next.  I hope I die before my wife because I couldn’t imagine living without her – yet my Mum and my Nana…..?

What a sad post.  I’ll put it on my blog, but not share it – the old and lonely are a generation behind the internet so they won’t read it, and those who do will feel bad for a bit and promise themselves to ring their Nana/Mum tomorrow….

Better at Beating Your Nemesis

Posted on by
Reply

We all have a ‘nemesis’ in our life…. the thoughts of which usually stay with us over the years.

Often this is a school nemesis:

  • The popular kids who wouldn’t be our friend….
  • The kids that always just beat us at sport / academics / or whos
    painting was always just a little bit better…
  • The girl who we never quite got the guts up to ask out – or did and didn’t kiss (and never saw again)…
  • The teacher who for no apparent reason appeared to hate us….
  • The bully….

This ‘life nemesis’ was often friend and foe, despised and admired, feared and friended all at the same time.  As our nemesis was often from childhood or school days the memories of it are often vivid or somehow real although our memory of specifics may not be so clear – it may also be just one occasion…

I used to train staff and often they would talk to me years later and say the influence I had on their careers.  Often this was as the mentor and guide – but it was also as the nemesis or the person it took them a long time to ‘get over’.

Often, when speaking to them, my wife would ask after a chance meeting ended, who was that, and I would say “I’ve got nothing” – it is the first and last scene from “An Officer and a Gentleman” over and over again – (“Queers and steers and I don’t see no horns….” and all that stuff).

The life of our nemesis is often really only in existence in our head.

It is the so often lamented moment in our past where we think…. “If only I had…”  Well. here is the scoop on this, you / I, didn’t.

The nemesis exists, because we didn’t (or sometimes we did, and are still wishing we didn’t…) and that is the trap – of literally being trapped in the past in your head.

I have a group of mates who are all now, like me, in their 50’s and when I get together with them, it can be for 5 minutes, or 5 hours or 5 days – they will spend the entire time recounting their exploits from 15 – 19 years old – those four years are the discussion.  They recount sexual, physical, sporting and every other types of events that appears to still be happening and everything else in the last 30 plus years never comes close in comparison.

The nemesis is like that.  They were bigger, badder, smarter, better looking than is possible and they stay that way over the years, never to be defeated…..  until you meet them again….?

This happened to me recently.

I met my nemesis after 38 years.

He was smaller, older, sicker and sadder than I could ever have imagined possible.  Of course he didn’t remember me!!!!  I chatted with him, had a beer and then the ultimate, he bummed $20.00 off me.

My nemesis was dead – and sadly more recently, literally dead; dying as I was retiring.

I sort of miss him.

I dont have a reason to remember him badly now.  As a matter of fact I realised that I never really did – it was just kids being kids in the 70’s where my nemesis was created in my head.  I also didn’t get a chance to chat with him about our lives between then and now.  Why school yard battles made him my nemesis and probably helped to get me through the rest of my life to retirement – and why those same battles where he was so often the victor, appeared to have destroyed him and been his only ‘glory days.’

I think my greatest nemesis has always been me.

I have not doubt been and still am the nemesis, focus of hate, reason for failure, of a lot of people.

I’m not dead and it is now, not then.

A few I have met, even the ones I didn’t remember, I have made the platitudes of apology for past wrongs (?), for things I said (?), for the angst I may have caused (?), their lives I destroyed, their self confidence stolen, their marriages broken up, cancer, global warming and the demise of the whale… because that is what they needed to hear from me to defeat their nemesis – or a least blame them – it is the least I can do for a ‘chinese burn’ or a ‘dead leg’ 30 years ago…. plus, in many cases I needed to do this for myself – even if I couldn’t remember the thing they have been thinking about for years.

The other way to defeat your nemesis is to get a mirror and have a look – not a yourself, but to make sure they are not on your back – because if they aren’t (and mostly they aren’t unless it is some sort of spooky horror movie..) then you are actually standing there by yourself.

Some have one nemesis, some have many, some are the nemesis and some are dead.

I think unless it calls for a sword fight, or pistols at 20 paces, the nemesis of youth, perhaps even our recent lives are actually dead at the exact moment we stop thinking about them – or unless of course they are dead – then what is the point of continuing to fight them (bar the occasional self satisfying piss on their grave…).

I think I will one day visit my nemesis’s grave, not to piss on it, but to say thank you and sorry.  Thanks for adding the bit to my life that I only just got to understand – but a lesson worth learning – and sorry that your life didn’t turn out so well…. that sort of makes me sad…

As Friedrich Nietzsche said:

“Whoever lives for the sake of combating an enemy has an interest in the enemy’s staying alive.”

 

Better at Catching Up with Friends

Posted on by
Reply

“Mate, I haven’t seen you for ages, how are you!”

Un-expectantly running into a friend can be such a nice surprise – if you take away the guilt/anger you feel because the last time you ran into them about a year ago you/they said you would call next week for lunch…..

And, do you know what, for me anyway, that’s okay – because I got to see you just then, by accident in the street and I am going to be happy for that and not wreck the moment thinking about the year between our last chance meeting…. and of course not blaming you for not fulfilling your promise and not calling me…. but, then again I have a phone right!

I am pretty good at catching up with friends, checking on people, sending a card, even a quick text to say ‘thinking of you’….. but, only just lately I started to realise why am I doing this?

I wrote a few posts ago about writing letters, yes, I still do as some of you will attest to, and a big part of that was about writing the letters for the other person – I don’t expect a reply, I get the joy from thinking of the person and writing the letter… hoping they get joy from reading it (see – Better at Writing Letters).

The thing is with a letter, much like contacting friends, you are not really sure what is going on at the other end.  Nowadays, especially with a lot of my friends still working, when I call they are busy, on the way to meetings, or sometimes you can just hear it is not a good time – and again, that is okay….  I have mates who still answer not matter what and say, “Hey, a bit busy call you back” and I say ‘Yep, thanks” and hang up – often they don’t call back, and that is okay, because they answered and I respected they were busy and now was not a good time – I at least got to think about them, hear their voice and fulfil a little bit of keeping the contact going, even though not what I thought it was going to be.

I don’t play the ‘they could have called me game’, or it is their turn, or they said they were going to arrange it….. because, I always can.  I so often hear of friends just fading away because each is playing the ‘waiting for them to call game’ – what a bullshit game where actually no-body wins.

Of course their are ‘users’ that often only call because they want something – can you help me move, can I borrow this, I need your free professional advice on this….. oh, yeah and sorry to hear your Mum died 5 years ago….. and that is okay to, because I have a magic solution…. I just say no.  I don’t lie, I just say no.

“I can’t help you move because I can’t want to” (my friends don’t ask me anymore – but not helping people move, or build a retaining wall or borrow a tool is another post – which I may have already written?)

 

“I can’t give you that professional advice because that would be unprofessional giving it as a friend.”

 

“I can’t lend you that I am using it.” (I’m using it by protecting my possession of it hanging in my shed where I really want it….)

 

But of course this in not everyone – everyone is not everyone.  All my friends who I contact are different.  Some, it may be a year but seems like yesterday – some it may be a year and seems like it was and we take a bit of warming up – some it may be a year and I can’t recognise them…. and guess what if they are my friend I AM interested….

I found the best way to ensure that you catch up with your friends is to catch up with them… sometimes you have to change things, reschedule things, plan for a long phone call and get 3 seconds, write a letter and get a 5 character text in reply…

But, but, but….

If they really are your friends than none of this is a problem – yeah, sometimes it is a little frustrating, but really even that is not true: if they’re your real friends and things keep getting in the way and you are frustrated, surely that is a good thing and tells you that they are a friend that is worth a little frustration…..

I still remember about 30 years ago when my Dad, who has been dead 25 years now, keep putting of visiting one of his mates who had cancer (I can write a 1000 reasons why…) but in the end his mate died and Dad never saw him again – he had cancer for over a year…  I have done this too.

So, one day, or with some people 3 o’clock in the morning after 400 beers, I may think of you and call, or a week later you may receive a card in the post that you can’t read and has red wine spilt on it…. just smile, Im just good at catching up with friends….. in my own way.